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Healing From a Distal Radius Fracture

I thought I would write about my experience having an injury where I fractured my distal radius bone in my right wrist March 2015, and what I did nutritionally to heal. What happened was I fell backwards off a high chair stool right onto a concrete floor; my wrist ‘broke’ the fall and that subsequently fractured my bone. I knew it was broken when I looked at it – it appeared ‘bent’. 😦 As soon as I arrived in the emergency room I was taken in straight away where I was X-rayed, put under and that’s when the doctor performed a ‘Closed Reduction’ on my wrist to set the bone and cast it… when I awoke I was in a cast, ..it was a surreal experience – the first bone broken in my entire life! ( and hopefully the Last! ).

The first report from the hospital that evening was; “There is a comminuted minimally displaced fracture of the distal radius demonstrating approximately 10 degrees of dorsal angulation of the radial articular surface. There is a mildly displaced fracture of the ulnar styloid as well.” The Radius bone had a slight shift forward, and because of this, the Ulna has also shifted and now sticks out – quite a lot – it also had a piece broken off from the break of the radius.

The day the cast came off, I had envisioned my wrist to be somewhat back to normal, perhaps with a bit of stiffness and ROM, however when I first saw my wrist after being in a cast for a month, I was shocked at how weak my wrist had become..I could not hold it up by itself or grab onto anything such as a glass or any items – which is apparently how it is after such a break. It had to be supported or else it would ‘flop’ down. The X-ray done after my cast was removed showed a shift in my bone – radius had tilted approximately 10 degrees which now would mean surgery to correct the bone placement. (Ugh) For the whole month while in the cast, according to all the x-rays, it was stated the bone was properly positioned and set inline – so surgery was not needed. Somewhere along the way my bone had shifted and was not noticed in any of the x-rays until my cast had come off.

This is the x-ray in the cast, just before it was removed (approximately a week before)..

..this was the day I had my cast removed; you can see the bone has shifted – and tilted quite a bit. The main reason for writing this blog is to share my experience and how it has changed the way I train at the gym; for example, I now cannot lift the same weight with certain angles of my arm because it impacts my wrist and puts a strain on the bone…so there is a bit of adjustment there. Thankfully I Can still do quite a bit with my wrist but have to be aware of the strain on it. There is still the surgery that is highly ‘recommended’. This involves a Ilium Crest Bone Graph (from hip) to build up bone in my wrist – it had lost length due to the displacement and position; also a titanium rod and screws!

I would love to hear feedback on this; has anyone had this type of injury, what did you do about it? How was your training affected? Did you have a long healing process? Did you have this type of surgery? What was the healing like for you and your day-to-day activities? I will be writing a follow-up blog here soon after the surgery + some nutritional tips for healing.